The most popular pan car classes (in the UK) are GT12 and LMP12, both 12th scale. Yet, there are a number of stalwarts who keep running the bigger 10th scale pan cars: GT10/WGT (World GT), WGT-R, or even Pro10. Why is that?

Ease of Setup and Maintenance

A lot of the setup of an RC car is proportional to its size: a bigger car will have a bigger setup window than a smaller one. The 10th scale cars, being 20% bigger than the 12th scale ones, can thus tolerate a lot more variance in their setup: a spring that’s slightly collapsed, a little bit of tweak…

Sure, they will work better if they are set up as best as possible, but a problem that would completely upset the handling of a 12th scale car, making it nearly undrivable, can often be just a bit of pulling to one side on a bigger car. It might not be acceptable for a national race, but makes club racing a lot less frustrating!

On top of that, most of the 10th scale classes tend to use control tyres of some sort, either the lilac striped “World GT” foam tyres, or the rubber tyres of WGT-R. This removes one variable, and simplifies set up by that much. A bigger foam tyre can tolerate more chunking until it is no longer usable. As the car’s weight is about the same, it means that the tyre loading is lower. Therefore the tyres wear more slowly, the setup is less work to maintain, and the running costs are lower. In WGT-R, the rubber tyres used make things even simpler!

They are also a bit easier to work on, thanks to their larger size: more space around the servo to make adjustments, easier to do a nice job of installing electrics in them, easier to fit the body shells… This isn’t a huge difference, people are able to build their 12th scale cars just fine, but it’s a nice bonus!

Ease of Driving and Speed

The bigger cars are a little bit lazier and less nimble, than their 12th scale counterparts; this might seem like a bad thing, but it also means they are more stable, and easier to drive quickly. Their size also helps visibility on the track, for drivers with less than perfect eyesight.

Pro10 and the older boosted GT10 classes are packing about as much power as the LMP12 modified class cars. The 12th scale modified cars may be renowned for being very difficult to drive. However, the more run-of-the-mill drivers in GT10 and Pro10 didn’t encounter any more difficulties driving them than they did in the LMP12 stock class or in the GT12 class. And the lap times are faster!

If you want to keep things more gentle, the WGT-R class runs with the same power and weight as the GT12 cars do, and the blinky GT10 only has a bit more power (while being less “pointy” to drive), so there’s a wide range of speeds possible with essentially the same cars.

The downside is that the bigger cars may have trouble with some tighter track layouts which might be popular at clubs usually running 12th scale cars (whether GT12 or LMP12). However, anywhere that touring cars are run successfully, the 10th scale pan cars can perform very well! It is not a question of size, my local club is only 16x10m, but being orientated towards touring cars, the layouts are quite friendly to the bigger pan cars. We have even run 235mm wide ones!

Accessibility: Indoors and Outdoors

While some folks do run 12th scale cars outdoors, they are not nearly as well-suited, and require very smooth tracks. Meanwhile, 10th scale pan cars are very commonly run outdoors. WLRC used to run GT10, Bedworth has a few people running Pro10 (popular in continental Europe), and Formula 1 cars are run at most outdoor track in the UK.

So, much like touring cars, 10th scale pan cars only need a few adjustments to be used year round!